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A vested interest in here in how the USA does at the World Cup of basketball

Big day out in Vegas today as the USA team, such that it is, begins its training camp for the World Cup in Spain later on this summer.

Am sure most of you heard the news over the weekend that both Blake Griffin and then Kevin Love pulled out unexpectedly and it leaves the Americans horribly small and terribly inexperienced up front and it’s going to make winning the gold medal a lot more difficult.

Now, don’t get me wrong, they are still the prohibitive favourites going into the tournament in Spain but their margin for error without Love, especially, just got a lot, lot smaller.

Love’s the prototypical FIBA stretch four and there is no one on the American team who can replicate his skill set.

And why should we care here what the Americans do, besides the fact we’re all fans of the game and some of us are hugely looking forward to the tournament?

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(A quick aside because I know some people with some juice are reading this: Find a way to get as many games as possible on LIVE television here. There are too many Canadian networks with ties to NBA TV and FIBA to subject us to tape-delayed crap. There’s lots of time to get this done, do it!)

Anyway, one reason you should care greatly is because if the Americans are upset somewhere along the line – and it absolutely could happen in any of the knockout round games – it will set in motion a chain of events with a direct impact on Jay’s senior Canadian team.

The winner of the World Cup gets an automatic spot in the 2016 Olympics, that’s it. If the Americans don’t win it, they will have to go through the same qualification process next summer as Canada and we all know they will a berth that way, perhaps taking one away that the Canadians could have claimed.

The Olympics have a smaller field – just 12 teams – and not having to worry about the Americans is a huge plus.

I’ve said all along it’s harder, much harder, to qualify for an Olympics than it is the World Cup, the fewer the obstacles, the better.

Of course, of major interest around these parts with that team will be how DeMar fares in his first shot at making a senior national team.

I’d say right now it’s a long shot that he’s on the final 12-man roster that plays in Spain but the huge benefit for him will be the practices, scrimmages and exhibition games. We know how much he benefited from his two short summers with the development team, what he learned simply by osmosis, and this can only be better for him, and by extension, the Raptors.

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I could totally sing every lyric of this song if it came on the radio when I was riding around somewhere in some magic car.

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So LeBron James has decided he’ll wear No. 23 when he returns to Cleveland rather than No. 6.

Whew! Maybe I can get a good night’s sleep now.

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Total loafing night on the couch and with a series of old Modern Family re-runs and then a handful of Duck Dynasty episodes and it was hard to figure out which was best?

I’d probably go with Modern Family, right?

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Still with FIBA Americas and next year, there’s still been no decision on a site for the women’s Olympic qualifier – I have a feeling they might be waiting to get the men settled before they do anything – but I think you still have to like Canada’s chances at hosting it in Edmonton.

Been a bit on the lax side with the world championship-bound women these past few weeks, and I’m kind of disappointed in myself for that, but they’re back at it out in Edmonton in the final stage of preparation for September’s worlds in Turkey.

They do have one good one coming up, an exhibition game against the United States in Connecticut. Another couple days on the road for me, I hope, but a trip that we need to make.

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You know how I feel about old-time baseball writing, right? How the game, long before it got cluttered with analytics and a preponderance of statistics, lent itself to some of the very, very best sportswriting ever?

It and boxing when boxing mattered were sports that provided beautiful written craftsmanship, the kind we simply don’t see often enough these days.

Well, and I’m late to the party a bit on this, one of the all-time best, a guy I grew up reading, whose books were read and re-read for years, went into baseball’s Hall of Fame on Sunday and it sent me down memory lane.

Roger Angell is one of the all-time greats, his ability to tell a story from different angles was and is delightful. Five Seasons is a seminal work, The Summer Game is timeless, just outstanding writing and story telling.

I don’t know how many of you would be old enough, or would have cared enough to have read him decades ago but if you did, he has to be near the top, right?

If you remember, how do you rank, say, Angell with Roger Kahn and David Halberstam? I’d probably call it a three-way tie.

Am I right?

Anyway, since The New Yorker is the one magazine I try to get to every week,
this was its pick as the must-read
stories by Angell from those pages and you’d do well to go through it your leisure.

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